This is more or less how I learned to draw things. People say you can't learn from tracing... but I feel like that's a misunderstanding bred from a combination of close-minded education and people not knowing how to learn from tracing. This might work for you. This might not work for you. But in a way, you have to treat this like studying rather than plain drawing. Either way, I hope it helps someone somewhere.

This method is best used with a bit of math. measure out how long certain body parts are according to the size of the head from chin to the top of the head. Approximations are totally okay. This is also a really general guide. You can vary it to make it more detailed by continuing to split what you have already split into halves into even more halves. There does come to a point where there's no point in splitting it even further though.

This method does not work very well if you only do it once or twice. Do it lots and do it often! The aim is to familiarize artists with what features happen where on bodies and when.

Also, note that the contours I followed included the clothing's contours, so there is no valley contour between the boobs.

Because there is no 'life' in a traced life drawing and so it cannot teach how to infuse life into your creations.

If the subject was a car, a bed or a dresser, this wouldn't be as big an obstacle, but in this instance, we're trying to capture life.

The results of tracing life are better described as doll-like rather than life-like. They tend towards being inert, with a feeling of weightlessness. (Which is fine if weightless and doll-like is your goal, but they shouldn't be the only expressions a technique is good at expressing).

For comparison, examine Frank Frazetta's paintings and drawings of the human form. There is tension, emotion and expression woven into every aspect from the general form to the minute detail.

In addition, there isn't any attention getting paid to what the major muscle groups do in-between contributing to the silhouette of the form. Surface form and muscle-flow matter just as much as silhouette, yet there is no part of this process that informs on those key aspects.

Some of the steps outlined here are useful shortcuts to seeing form, but they're shortcuts best applied after one already has a bead on drawing life, and that means from observation and drawing through the figure and not just around it or segmenting its volumes.

Some people aren't trying to learn how to infuse life, or if they're trying to, they have a much harder time infusing life when they don't have an accurate form. They get blocked. This helps them proportion form in order to increase their ability to infuse life. In other words, it's an intermediary measure, not the fail-safe-solve-all. It's just to help the people who can't figure out dynamics because the form isn't there to better develop form. Some people just learn better that way!

But I do understand your feedback. That's why I hate doing gestures from anything but observation. This isn't "You can learn to draw from only tracing." This is "there is a way to learn to draw by tracing." Otherwise, I would have just traced the entire figure. XD;;;;;

Note that this is a tutorial for absolute beginners. There isn't any attention paid to the muscle groups because beginners aren't ready for that yet. There are many wonderful muscle tutorials on the internet as resources for artists who are ready for them. If I tried to put that into my tutorial here, not only would I be repeating what they're saying, I would also be overwhelming people who really don't understand what's going on here.

So you are right. These are shortcuts for seeing form. That's exactly what this tutorial is intended to be, since there is value in studying proportions.

Have you ever seen those Lumosity website ads on TV? If you've never played one of their games, the general idea is that these game apps are designed to stimulate mental acuity in specific areas, and if you play them you can see the link between the game mechanics and the promised goal. For example, the game "Lost in Migration" has repeating variations of different patterns made up of a flock of 5 birds, and you have to keep swiping your finger to move only in the direction of the bird in the middle while ignoring the rest of the flock. The goal of the game is to boost your ability to focus your attention and ignore distractions. The connection between the method and the result is fairly intuitive.

My thing is that I don't see an intuitive path that suggests that tracing actually helps boost proportioning skills. To turn the original question back around: How does tracing enhance proportioning skills? What is the connection between the action of tracing and the understanding that is promised to follow it? The reason why tracing is easier is because you don't have to think about measuring, and measuring (or comparing sizes, areas, lengths and angles) of some sort is what develops the ability to proportion.

Does tracing boost confidence? Perhaps. But one can boost confidence the minute one remembers that there is no real world consequence for messing up a drawing. A lot of stress in drawing is composed of the fear of messing up. Simply not getting attached to the drawing is the fastest way of letting you turn your focus away from fear and on what matters: intellectually making quick estimations of what you see. Sure, tracing relieves the pressure of 'getting it right' as well, but as a confidence booster, tracing seems more like a placebo, does it not? Is the confidence actually earned? Is it real? Are you really getting anything back in return for it?

As methods go, I'm always interested to see how many people advance because of the method as opposed to in spite of it (i.e., it's something they did for awhile, but advancement did not happen until after it was abandoned for another method entirely). Lots of people, even professionals, have passed through a phase of tracing at some point in their life, but is that an indication of how well it functions as a teaching tool, or in spite of it? I've seen plenty of regret over time lost on such practices - people who stagnated in that phase -, but little in the way of any credit given to tracing by those who've traveled the road long enough to see success, and the few who do, put some severe limitations and qualifications on it's usefulness. With such cautionary tones invoked by even those who tepidly give some measure of credit to tracing, I think at the very least, it's a bit too much to put this out there as a viable competing method to observation.

All that said, I think there are circumstances where tracing can be beneficial, just not necessarily as outlined above. I think tracing the work of the masters like Michaelangelo and Da Vinci, in recreating their linework (they drew throughout the figure, with surface marks and all) are beneficial for putting your mind into a 3-d on 2d mindset. I think tracing photos with the mindset of cutting across the figure and form, leaving the edges behind to find the rhythm and form of the pose and the figure, might have some benefit, and as a stepping stone to more observational work.

Ultimately, everything is theory until it meets practicality, and that's where the testimony of those who have made it, matters.

Your intuition differs from others. Some people learn to program from the book. Other people, like me, learn to program by taking a pre-existing program and dismantling it line by line. Once enough of those programs are dismantled, I suddenly realize "I understand how to do this now." It's like you said about those little games and tests. When you do something enough times, you realize a pattern. Well, if you trace enough times, you also notice a pattern... IF you follow the steps in this tutorial, especially the part about studying, not just mindlessly tracing. Sure, you can also notice a pattern by drawing from observation, but what of the people who can't figure out the pattern from something that they don't believe is accurate to begin with? Some of them give up because they felt defeated in their minds, despite how much potential they really have.

Tracing is similar to practicing fingering on a piano for scales. You don't learn how to infuse life into the music when you practice rote-memorized actions. You learn to infuse life into it using other methods. So why do we practice scales? It's for muscle memory, so when you encounter a scale-like pattern in sheet music, you know what to do, how to play it, and how to do it in an agile manner. Tracing provides the equivalent of that for art. For people who are truly stumped about how to draw from observation and only want to work on certain figures, it builds confidence -- and yes, that confidence is real for, at the very least, me, and I don't believe I'm so special-snowflake that I am alone. I can put down a mark on the paper without being afraid of making mistakes. That confidence is vital for many who, no matter how many times you tell them "there's no real life consequence," they still remain afraid. Not everyone is as pragmatic as you or I. For people who don't understand how 3D translates to 2D, it creates a literal connection that helps the mind "click."

I feel like there may be a misunderstanding between us. I never meant for tracing to be the only way anyone can practice. That would be silly! After all, there must be very good reasons for so many people to oppose learning by tracing in the first place. But it is as you say. There are certain benefits to tracing, especially for concept artists who just want to get their ideas down first, then refine it later. It's useful for people who work in design rather than illustration. It's useful for people who just need to understand how something is put together. They can progress later.

We all do things for a reason. I made this tutorial because of two main reasons. The first is that my watchers who are afraid of haters who hate on tracers of all sorts find it difficult to understand things like proportions and measuring. In fact, they're quite good except for their proportions. This is to dispel their fear and show them that someone who they look up to will not condemn them for trying to learn in their own way. The second is that many people come to me asking for advice about how an arm should look or how a leg should be placed. Many of those questions come up because heavy foreshortening is involved. By tracing a reference image, then using the dotted lines to indicate the cross-section, a person who can't translate 3D to 2D can make that "click" which connects the real form to the illusion they're trying to create. Explaining foreshortening to them sometimes works but sometimes they nod and say yes without understanding a thing. What I found through experience was if I demonstrated something on a photograph by tracing, they gain a much better understanding of how the figure is put together. So then, why not show them how to trace a reference for themselves to understand how it's put together?

You don't have to worry about measuring when you MINDLESSLY trace, but when you look through my tutorial, you'll notice that the first thing I ask the readers to do is to get into their mindset for studying and prepare for a lot of visual memorization. That's the whole POINT of this tutorial. I am having people see and draw bulges, curves, cross-sections in order to memorize their appearance.

When buildings are built, foundations are made. Those foundations include drawing from observation. They include the elements and principles of design. They include color theory and much more. Those foundations need to be pounded in. But WHERE are they pounded into? Well, a hole in the ground is the best way to describe that. If the hole in the ground isn't deep enough, then the foundations can't sink in well or far. What I'm trying to do here is help people dig a deeper hole with which they can build their base foundations on.

You don't have to agree with me, of course! I'm well aware that "tracing is bad" is something that many people in the art word say. I also think that your suggestions for other exercises most certainly have their merits. All I am saying is that this is helping people that I know. As long as they're not silly enough to trace entire photographs and only trace to look for proportions and memorize them, to memorize what happens in what situations so they can CHECK their observational studies, then why not provide this help?

This was never, never meant to be a crutch. For people who think like me, it's meant to be a different way of explaining. It's meant to be a method of "working backwards." It's meant to be a way to understand why other artists have done certain things. It's meant to give concrete numbers to body parts so they can be remembered: how many heads to a torso in this picture? How many in the next? What angle did they stand at? Is there a correlation after I've traced and measured 10 bodies that weren't moving? It's meant to be an inspiration for people who think mathematically and get anxious when people move, so anxious that they can't draw another stroke. It's not meant to be a foundation.

Another commenter below suggested doing an image from observation first, then tracing, then measuring again. That's one way to build on this! You can measure the image, first, then draw from observation. You can draw first, then check by measuring the traces on the photos. You can trace and measure 10 photos in a row, then try drawing something from observation unrelated to the photos, to see if your foundations have improved. One day, people will be expected to float away from tracing. That's a given. But before they learn to run or even walk, I hope they gain the confidence to roll over onto their stomach and take their first crawl.

I kind of wish you'd said that bit about the foreshortening in the main body of the tutorial because I wasn't thinking that's what you were talking about that at all when reading it. If this is an exercise about thinking in terms of depth and foreshortening, then perhaps instead of drawing circles at the joints, drawing cross-sections that 'copy over' the cross section of the limbs at that point would better get the point across (it would be more of the orange ovals than blue circles in that case). The blue circles in this context only seem to emphasize the flatness of the picture, killing depth rather than the fullness of the form it represents (couldn't hurt to show the (magenta) turning edges of the legs and arms too, beyond just the centerlines of each .

I think if we are using some kind of analytical mindset in all of this, then tracing doesn't really describe it what it is you're doing. Copying perhaps would be better at describing the process, or recreating the form through copying. Tracing inevitably carries with it some assumptions, and not without reason. As you said, most people think mindless and tracing go hand-in-hand already. Why fight that mindset? Heck, I didn't realize what principle this was meant to teach until you specified it, in part because tracing still evokes a strong mental image of non-thinking.

In any case, I get it now. I see what you're trying to say. Just wish it hadn't taken so many words to get it

XD Sorry that it wasn't clear. I sometimes think the silliest things are obvious when they aren't. Though, I did mention that in the tutorial that it's for thinking. Rather... I thought the text of the tutorial itself, plus the fact that it wasn't actually tracing any of the facial features, would scream the fact that this has nothing to do with capturing life or depth. Or, even further, the fact that most people would think it's flat would give away the purpose. I mean... why do people draw from observation if tracing was the only thing they had to do? O__o Someone older and smarter than me would have circulated this method looooong ago and they'd be teaching it everywhere. Furthermore, the word "tutorial" means that it's a guide, something that teaches, so I'm not sure why it doesn't invoke the image of something meant to teach. XD;;;;;; Because of that, I thought that the point was obvious. I apologize for assuming this. I'm still not good at understanding how people think. I'm not being sarcastic either, this is quite hard for me!

The reason I used the word "tracing" is not to sound sensational. It's, like I said before, to dispel that fear many of my watchers have about tracing anything. They don't want to be hated by the people that think tracing to practice or observe or learn is not okay. I am using the word "tracing" in order to combat their use of the word "tracing," so that the people who look up to me can learn the way they need to learn without being afraid.

You say so yourself, that tracing invokes a strong mental image of non-thinking. It goes to show how deep the stigma runs, that you would still get that invocation even though I wrote "Some people have said that people trace mindlessly. I feel like that might be the root of the problem," then go about to change people's view about tracing for the entire rest of a tutorial. At the end, I even say "So both trace and draw from observation!" In the description, I wrote, "People say you can't learn from tracing... but I feel like that's a misunderstanding bred from a combination of close-minded education and people not knowing how to learn from tracing. This might work for you. This might not work for you. But in a way, you have to treat this like studying rather than plain drawing."

If I don't stop the use of the word "tracing" from keeping people who need this to advance, who's going to? Everything you questioned due to any misunderstanding was already answered in my tutorial and in the descriptions, but you didn't catch it because that word invokes "mindlessness." It took this many words to explain it all again in different words... just because of that word. I think that's a brainwashing definition worth fighting against, so I will continue to call this "tracing."

I actually find this more of a study method rather than a "trace" as the objective is trying to understand the form before putting it to application for drawing. When most people are against tracing, they are against tracing over fanart, anime screenshots, and anything around such. I have never seen people complain about tracing stock as stock is there to help people regardless of their methodology background.

Don't get me wrong. I agree about tracing getting a bad reputation and that there are good tracing means such as this for learning tool purposes. Anybody ever heard of stencils? XD How people use stencils are no different than what you are doing here.

While I understand what you're saying about study method rather than tracing, I phrased the tutorial this way and called it "tracing" because of the misunderstanding behind the action of tracing itself. People who are against tracing generalize the act of tracing and lump it with the act of art theft involving tracing. When they generalize, they say that "tracing is bad." As a result, people who wish to learn and understand a form are pressured into not using the act of tracing as a method of study. From a marketing standpoint, I felt like my sensationalization of the topic by using the word "tracing" can act as a counter to the damage created by the generalization. It's similar to Taichi. Rather than face the problem with all the force concentrated on a single point like in rapier-fencing, this method follows the movements of the opponent (the movement here being generalization of the word "trace" and the opponent being the idea that "tracing" is wrong) and uses it against the opponent in a way the opponent can agree with.

What I'm trying to combat aren't people who complain about tracing a stock. I'm combating the fear growing artists have of tracing anything due to a common misunderstanding.

Ah, I see what you mean. It's nice to get a different perspective in things. Generalizations can be quite harmful and it's nice you gave a better insight to how tracing can help in such methods like this. I will try this method along with observation. The gridding seems quite useful and pretty much highlights what I observe with my eyes! XD It can work like a fact checker for me! XD

This is great! I love how you approached this, especially since tracing is such a touchy matter with many artists anyways. I'm definitely going to try this and hopefully begin to understand anatomy better.Thank you for this awesome guide!

To add, I'd personally would go with drawing the figure once from observation before tracing - for a feel of like doing a test and then being shown the answer. And then another drawing without observation at all after the tracing to make sure I remember the 'new stuff'.

On another note, I would personally darken the green ink of step 2 for a better clarity. If I take the image and convert it to greyscale, the value difference between text and bg is too small IMO.

this is a very good method of learning. it's how i learned to draw and eventually you can recognize what shapes are supposed to look like i won't need to go through these step. this really enforces muscle memory and stuff great tutorial.

Indeed, but many people are afraid of even the action of tracing due to the misconception that all tracing is bad. The evidence can be found in the comments as well. By calling it "tracing," I bring attention to the problem of shaming tracers for any form of tracing and challenge that opinion with reason, thus when someone is seen tracing, people do not jump to the conclusion that the tracer is necessarily doing something shameful.

This is actually a really sweet learning method. Whenever I tried to trace it would always end up far more two dimensional looking than what I desired. The use of separating into four sections really seems to bring a better understanding on how the figure moves. Thanks for posting!

what you have to say on this topic is really interesting, I have tried tracing a few time before and had never learned from it. but I think the problem was that I never went into it with the right mind set, I have always done better drawing what I see but I don`t see any problem with this. and I might even try this on some things I have trouble with.

I would love to link this tutorial up on theOtaku.com so the artists there can be sent to this page to read your useful advice and tips on tracing!! I have no problem with this type of guideline tracing. What I do not like is when people go around tracing full scans or images and then claiming all copyright without even linking reference pictures. I'm sure this tutorial will help many people with knowing that its OK to trace when you do it the right way to get guidelines and give credit too!

I've heard a lot of different opinions about tracing. My mom didn't think it was an okay thing but my dad thought it was okay. I learned by tracing as well though in the end. I remember I started off tracing pokemon and sometimes animals. But when I tired it without tracing I found that compared to before I had improved a lot (I originally had to draw stick figures if I wanted to draw people...). Every now and then I'll trace something I'm not really good at drawing (birds, dogs, dragons, etc...). So tracing can be good. I really don't see the harm in it just as long as people don't take credit for the drawing they traced.

I agree that tracing can be used as an educational tool, whatever helps you understand why things work, that's fine. I think the main issue you'll face with tracing is that people don't use it for educational purposes or as a stepping stone, they draw over something and they call it theirs and it's done and ready for posting. I like the presentation of your tutorial here, because it explains the kind of thought process one should have going into it. Whatever you do in life, go into it with thought and effort.

I have heard a lot of the 'tracing is bad' mentality, not just on the internet either. What amuses me is that in many art classes you are actually *encouraged* to trace things, especially if the point is to learn a certain aspect or work on new techniques (such as color, shading, etc.).

I, personally, trace when I have issues with a pose or am working on an animal I have never worked on before. I used to trace the entire thing, and while I learned from it the knowledge I gained was minimal. I learned a technique similar to what you show here, I get the basic pose down, and then flesh the image out with my own work. I'm only able to do that because of my past experiences though!

I think the greatest issue people have with tracing mostly has to do when a person traces something (especially something that has been labelled a 'not for public use' piece) and then attempt to pass it off as their own. These people give those of us who trace and then keep the art private (which I often do) and the tracers who use the free, available stock and credit it properly.

As is so often the case, the minority of 'bad/lazy' minority has given the main body a bad name.

Lesson to be learned? Credit, credit, credit! (and only use what has been okay'd for use)

I am sure that will help me to become better.yeah, I actually never did this.I didn't even copied another drawing.I always felt ashamed : ' D /but that is why I have problems drawing proportions now ;-; /

Thanks so much for this! I used to trace, but once I got online everyone said it was bad. But learning the body of a human or animal is not bad, no matter what drawing tool you are using to learn it. Tracing the way you showed is not very different than using a photo for reference as you draw-both are looking for the shape of the body and how the lines are placed.